[EuroPython] Starting to plan

[Heimo Laukkanen]

> I'm willing to do Zope again, as long as it means I foist all the work 
> on Heimo again. :^)

Rock on!

Like I previously said it was fun and would really like to do it again.

> I very much agree.  The track chairs arranged the schedules in blissful 
> isolation.  Though it might be hard to add the extra preparation to 
> coordinate, it's still a good goal.

Coordination is a good idea. For that however we need to think of the 
profiles / stereotypes of different visitors and what do they want to 
get out of the conference since the interests can very very very easily 
overlap on multiple different tracks, especially on very technical or 
programming focused people.

On Zope track we also had people who were very new to whole genre and 
were there mostly because of what they had just learned about Zope / Plone.

> +100.  EPC2003 was too much of the "I talk you listen" format.  I gave 
> a 3 hour hands-on tutorial to 40 people at OSCOM 3 this past year 
> (writing CMS clients in Mozilla).  Most of them said later that such a 
> format was the most valuable part of the conference.
> 
> Will the venue support such needs?  It's a space (lots of smaller 
> rooms) and logistics (network, beamer) issue.

+100

Harder to do, more expensive to do, requires a lot more work from the 
presenter but is highly valuable.

What I usually want from a conference falls into following categories:

   1) Talks that illuminate new paths of thought, paradigms, developments

   2) Examples and cases of problem solving, even better if someone has 
distilled his lessons into patterns that can be reused.

   3) Workshops where people have to also participate and work with the 
guidance of the instructor

   4) Sprint / Panel-discussion / Debate where people participating 
bring their own experiences and ideas and try to solve something together


> One other point for discussion...I think that EPC2003 showed less of a 
> company exhibitor stance that EPC2002.  I wonder if something was lost, 
> or whether the loss wasn't valuable.
> 
> IMO, we need to show companies, even if it means charging them 
> *nothing* (other than registration) for the privilege.  At least, 
> nothing for small (under 15) companies.

+10

Showing companies is good and a stand/table is a natural place to come 
to meet people and talk about what their company does. However with 
small companies this could be problematic also because of the social 
nature of EPC - meaning that people want to meet and talk with their 
friends and colleagues, mingle - rather than stand next to a table and 
get new people to contact and talk with them.

But I am not sure, this is just my impression on how keen technical 
people are to stand still and try to contact people and tell them about 
their work ,--)

But all and all I do agree with Paul. Showing more companies sends right 
message to the participants, even subconscious - about thriving 
community and businesses. This is important for the newcomers who will 
go back to their organisations and social circles and tell how much they 
saw.

-huima